Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Summer Christmas

The thought behind last
week’s post, “Hevel Happens,” was confirmed by our delivery
system sending it to subscribers a day late! Sorry!

I
thought of writing this and posting around Christmas, but I am so overcome with
something like a convert’s zeal that I can’t wait till then, even though each
year summer’s end has the lowest ebb in terms of blog visitors who are not
subscribers. Earlier this season, for
example, we enjoyed over 4000 monthly visitors but are now shy of 3000. So I invite you to share this link/post with
as many people as possible!

What
I “got” from it goes a bit beyond Brown’s actual elucidation of this text,
though not beyond its implications. I suddenly understood that the “mystery” of
Christmas (though of course mystery by its very definition can never be
understood, only “wondered” at) is that early Christians finally “got” that God
was in the world, in earth, in its creatures and in its matter, and in us—our
very DNA.

And
this is a tenet that we skeptical, doubting, deconstructionist,
demythologizing, progressive Christians may affirm without reservation, I
believe.

“In
the beginning was the word [logos].”
… Typically translated “Word,” logos
comes from Greek Stoic philosophy and refers to the structuring principle of
the universe that makes all life possible. … Call it God’s Grand Unifying
Principle (aka GUP). But Logos in
John is more than a formal abstraction, more than a grand unified theory of
everything as pursued by physicists (aka GUT). No, the Logos is embodied.

The
reason I write that my “ah-hah” may go a little beyond Brown’s interpretation
is that I believe that, instead of this being the moment at which God entered the cosmos, entered the
earth, inhabited “dirt”—that rather, this was the moment when we realized God’s essence or organizing
principle or divine life was always incarnated in creation. That may be Brown’s
intent as well.

I’ve
written in an earlier post that the mystic Hildegard of Bingen believed that
the Incarnation was not a result of “The Fall” or sin, but was intended by God
from the beginning of Creation.

Physicists
and theologians are engaged in similar tasks, discerning and discovering the
“structuring principle of the universe that makes all life possible.”
Scientists might say theologians are relying on “supernatural” phenomena or
beliefs, when the Incarnation might mean there is nothing supernatural about
God—that God is as “natural” and integral to the cosmos as we are.

Does
that discount a “personal” God? It surely discounts a tribal, nationalistic, or
parochial deity, but reveals a deity to be found in our very DNA, our skin,
flesh, blood, eggs, sperm, tears, and bones—what could be more personal than
that? And that we would attribute to that deity our highest values—love,
compassion, justice, equality, shalom,
and good stewardship—such as equal distribution of the world’s goods, care for
“the least of these,” and respect for our environment—to name a few of those
values, touches our deepest felt needs and lifts us to our highest aspirations,
and it could be said, those of God.

Process
theology posits a God that includes the cosmos, making in effect everything we
can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste God’s “body.” Thus God is the ultimate
altruist, sharing divine life sacrificially and universally, exemplified in
Jesus of Nazareth’s living and dying for others, inviting his followers do the
same. That is the path to resurrection, to new life, to new possibilities, to
re-creation. Later in the book, Brown explains in his chapter, “Consummated
Wonder,” that Revelation is about the earth’s renewal, not rapture, through
God’s indwelling presence.

Brown
notes that John affirms the darkness cannot overcome the light that is the life
of the world and uses “a surprising word for God’s full-bodied embrace of
creaturely existence, [that] has little to do with limitation: ‘fullness’ or pleroma in Greek (1:16). It is from
God’s outward-extending abundance, from God’s pleroma that God becomes enfleshed. Divine pleroma is like an aroma that fills a room, like the costly
ointment Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet… Or like God’s glory, which ‘filled
the tabernacle’…”

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ABOUT CHRIS...

Chris Glaser has a ministry of writing and speaking. Since graduation from Yale Divinity School in 1977, Chris has served in a variety of parish, campus, editorial, and interim posts. He has spoken to hundreds of congregations, campuses, and communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and published a dozen best-selling books on spirituality, sexuality, vocation, contemplation, scripture, sacrament, theology, marriage, and death.